Am able to Blog again !!!

My Back and Liver pain has been reduced, so that I can blog. The biggest factor in this was positive belief in myself. It was just getting out there and doing it. I start a Veteran’s Move program in 3 day s to strength my back muscles as well as toing the rest of my [...]

Navajos Observe 30th Anniversary of Uranium Spill

CHURCH ROCK, N.M.—Community members and environmental activists commemorated July 16 as the 30th anniversary of a massive uranium tailings spill that Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. called “the largest peacetime accidental release of radioactive contaminated materials in the history of the United States.”

The accident occurred when an earthen dam, operated by the United Nuclear Corp., failed and let loose 94 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the north fork of the Rio Puerco on Navajo Nation lands. Within days, contaminated tailings liquid was found 50 miles downstream in Arizona.

About 100 Navajos and non-Navajos, including members of the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE) and other environmental groups, walked a five-mile stretch through the remote mesa lands of Church Rock to the site of the July 16, 1979 spill. They stopped at Larry King’s ranch along New Mexico Highway 566 for a speech by the Navajo president.

Tribes: Turbine site is sacred

Please read article, cited after the quote. Articles open in a new window.

Officials from two federally recognized Indian tribes say they are frustrated in their attempts to protect what they consider a sacred site from becoming part of an offshore wind farm.

The two tribes want federal officials to deny a permit to Cape Wind for Horseshoe Shoal and move the proposed 130 wind turbines to another site.
Objections

Both the Mashpee Wampanoag and the Wampanoag of Gay Head (Aquinnah) have two main objections to the Cape Wind project:

* It would destroy a sacred site where ancestors fished, hunted and possibly were buried.
* It would obstruct their view of the horizon, thus interfering with their spiritual well-being.

Atomic veterans gather to remember their shared past as ‘guinea pigs’

LEBANON — Fifty years after watching dozens of atom bombs explode as a young Navy engine man, Larry Wickizer uses a two-word phrase to describe himself and the others who share his past.

“Guinea pigs,” he says, looking out over a room of veterans gathered Thursday at American Legion Post No. 51 to observe the National Day of Atomic Remembrance.

Gray heads nod in agreement. Virtually all of them bore witness to the weapons tests conducted by the U.S. government in the North Pacific during the 1950s and 1960s

New drug shields against radiation

A MEDICATION that can protect people exposed to normally lethal doses of radiation from a nuclear or a “dirty” bomb has been developed, reports say.

In tests involving 650 monkeys exposed to radiation equivalent to that recorded during the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in 1986, 70 per cent died while the rest suffered serious maladies, the newspaper Yediot Achronot said yesterday.

Of the group given anti-radiation shots, almost all survived and had no side effects. A test on humans not exposed to radiation showed none suffered side effects from the medication.

Reactor shut down over lack of demand

TIVERTON — The Bruce Power nuclear generating station has shut down one of its reactors.

The problem isn’t mechanical — it’s because there isn’t enough demand for the electricity generated by the station.

Spokesperson Steve Cannon says the manufacturing slowdown caused by the recession and a cooler summer have left Bruce Power with a surplus

House defeats amendment to energy appropriations bill

The House of Representatives defeated an amendment July 17 to the fiscal
2010 energy and water appropriations bill that would have eliminated funding
for the Yucca Mountain waste repository project. Representative Mike Simpson,
an Idaho Republican, offered the amendment but voted against it, saying his
goal was to put his colleagues on the record about taking away Yucca’s
funding. Simpson said in a floor statement that President Barack Obama’s
decision to suspend the Yucca Mountain program was “a political bow” to Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, not a decision “that is based on sound science and
sound policy.” The amendment was defeated overwhelmingly. Overall, the bill,
which was approved by the House 320-97, would provide DOE with $26.9 billion
in fiscal 2010, $1.52 billion below the Obama administration’s budget request.
The Senate Appropriations Committee passed a $27.4 billion measure on July 8,
but it was unclear July 17 when it would receive a floor vote

Gates says famine is eroding N.K. military threat

WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday that North Korea’s famine has reduced the threat posed by its armed forces.

“This is an army that’s starving,” Gates said at a town hall meeting with soldiers at the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum in upstate New York.

“The famine of the mid-1990s has affected the physical and even intellectual development of those that are now coming into the zone who would be eligible for military service,” he added.

Sloppy work at Perry nuclear power plant concerns Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is concerned about sloppy workmanship and employee inattention to detail at the Perry nuclear power plant.

The NRC wants plant owner FirstEnergy Corp. to explain how it plans to correct these problems at a public meeting Tuesday night in Mentor. The agency will also take questions from the public.

Perry’s troubles cropped up more than a year ago and, despite the Akron-based utility’s efforts, have continued this year, the agency said

We shouldn’t swap nuclear waste for mercury

What does a really bad idea look like? It looks like the U.S. Department of Energy’s proposal to store 17,000 tons of mercury at the Idaho National Laboratory.

That would be the same INL located a few hundred feet above the Magic Valley’s water supply.

INL is one of seven sites in the running for long-term disposal of elemental mercury, which is used in manufacturing and mining. The others are the Grand Junction Disposal Site in Colorado; the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state; Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada; the Kansas City Plant in Missouri; the Savannah River site in South Carolina; and Waste Control Specialists in Andrews, Texas. DOE already stores 1,200 tons of mercury at its Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.